An average ACC defense will allow the opposing team to score 1.06 points per possession, and thus far on the young conference season Virginia has held opponents to 1.05. This is not what we’re used to seeing from Tony Bennett’s guys.

The Cavaliers still look pretty fair defensively when the entire season’s taken into account, and, yes, the conference schedule to this point has been robust even by ACC standards. Still, this will bear watching. Logging 319 ACC possessions sums to a pretty fair sample size in its own right, and in that time opponents have been shockingly disrespectful of the Hoos’ finer traditions on D. Indeed said opponents have been impertinent enough to connect on their two-pointers at a rate (49 percent) that’s identical to what Division I as a whole is doing against the rest of D-I. This has also been one of the ACC’s more foul-prone defenses. Virginia? Is that really you?

Fortunately for fans in Charlottesville, UVA has opened ACC play as easily the hottest shooting team in the league. With London Perrantes leading the way, the Cavaliers have hit 47 percent of their threes in conference action. Casual commentators may complain of “Virginia scoring droughts” again this season, but the truth is the Hoos are putting points on the board. The surprising thing is their opponents are too.

Five times in UVA’s first five conference games, a team has scored 1.10 points per trip or more. Three times that team was the Cavaliers, but twice it was the opponent (Pitt, and then Clemson). The Hoos are winning shootouts.

Notre Dame is clutch. The Fighting Irish have played 10 major-conference opponents this season. Nine of those games have been decided by single digits, and in those contests ND is 7-2. Mike Brey’s guys will play Florida State in Tallahassee tomorrow night, and the safe bet is that it will be close.

Before the Oklahoma offense suffers what is likely to be a statistically damaging hit courtesy of tomorrow night’s game at West Virginia, this might be a good moment to reflect on what we’ve seen from the Sooners on that side of the ball thus far.

After five games this has been the Big 12’s weakest offense, and it is likely that over the course of the conference season as a whole this distinction will come down to a two-team competition between OU and Texas. True, Jordan Woodard missed three of those games, but the struggles on offense this season predate the start of Big 12 play. Just one year removed from Buddy Hield’s historic melding of accuracy and volume, Oklahoma simply has no reliable method for getting the ball in the basket. This is the worst two-point shooting team in the league by a margin of nearly six percentage points.

No team replaces a national player of the year with ease, and the Sooners had to absorb the loss of not only Hield but also Isaiah Cousins and Ryan Spangler. Then again those guys were all seniors, and their departures did occur on schedule. This day was known to be coming.

At least the Sooners are coming off by far their best offensive performance of the conference season, an 84-75 win at home over Texas Tech. On paper Rashard Odomes and Woodard form a good inside-outside duo, and there are 13 games yet to be played. The lesson of replacing a Buddy Hield is that you’re not going to and don’t need to try. Turn to defense, shot volume, threes, and/or something else entirely. Find what works.

Marquette lacks a quote-unquote signature win this season (Georgia? Vanderbilt?), so the Golden Eagles’ dramatic improvement on offense has largely flown under the radar. That being said, the difference between now and one year ago is stark and, for fans in Milwaukee, encouraging.

In fact, this would be a good time for Steve Wojciechowski to grab his phone and take a picture: Marquette has, at this moment, the Big East’s best offense, one that has scored 1.16 points per trip. It’s no accident that Butler needed to score a ridiculous number of second-half points to win at home against MU on Monday (and, yes, no accident that the Bulldogs were able to do so against this defense).

The main impetus behind the turnaround has been the brute fact that the Eagles’ threes are now falling. When you’re the league’s most perimeter-oriented team not named Villanova, that will take you a long way. Markus Howard, Andrew Rowsey, and Sam Hauser are shooting a combined 50 percent from beyond the arc in Big East play.

At the same time, Marquette has also improved by leaps and bounds in terms of pure shot volume. Last year in conference play, this offense gave the ball away on 21 percent of its possessions and pulled down just 25 percent of its misses. Those numbers so far this season are 17 and 32, respectively. Woj has turned a corner on one side of the ball, at least.

Get well, Mo. At this writing the the extent of Maurice Watson’s injury is still unknown. Here’s hoping he returns very, very soon. Creighton this season has been a highly watchable team, with Watson carving up defenses speedily and deftly, Marcus Foster logging more featured-scorer possessions more happily than at any time in his career, Justin Patton becoming more and more of a surprise freshman sensation almost game by game, and Greg McDermott’s usual sack full of deadly perimeter shooters. I hope to have the pleasure of seeing Watson at full-speed and his team at full-strength. Best wishes, sir.

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The Wolverines make other teams look statistically normal

You’d be unhappy too if your opponents were making all their threes. (annarbor.com)

If you scan carefully down both the “PPP” and “Opp. PPP” columns, you’ll be forgiven for concluding that Michigan has both the Big Ten’s best offense and its worst defense. We may not arrive at mid-March still making these dueling-for-extremity claims for the Wolverines, but they are, each in their own way, a serviceable enough description of what we’ve seen from John Beilein’s guys thus far.

This is going to be an outstanding offense until further notice, one that’s following the well-worn “excel at twos by shooting a lot of threes” Beilein pattern. Michigan has connected on 56 percent of its tries inside the arc in Big Ten play (I see you, D.J. Wilson), and the Wolverines have done so while picking up the Bo Ryan zero-turnover torch that Greg “Maybe offensive rebounds aren’t evil after all” Gard so callously discarded. Then again Ryan himself may have learned a few lessons in that regard from Beilein. (Pull up West Virginia 2006 on KenPom sometime.)

Yet this particular high-efficiency team is being outscored by its conference opponents, in part because those opposing offenses have made 55 percent of their threes. I fearlessly predict this number will drop (nominations are still open for the 2017 Profiles in Analytic Courage Awards), but even when that happens we may still be looking at a group that’s shaky in the paint and sub-par on the glass. The tendencies on both sides of the ball appear to be fairly strong for Team Extreme.

Clearly the Cubs’ history-vanquishing karma is contagious. Yes, you’re reading that name next to the No. 2 up there correctly. Northwestern really has been the Big Ten’s second-best team in per-possession terms to this admittedly early point in the season. I’ll have more thoughts on Chris Collins’ amazin’ Wildcats this week at the mother ship. For now I will note simply that it would seem I’m going to have to get used to my brother’s boasts about his alma mater’s athletic prowess. This has never been a problem before.

With all due respect to Louisville-Florida State, you can make a case that the best game of the upcoming weekend will be Arizona at UCLA on Saturday afternoon. The Wildcats have opened Pac-12 play by dominating the defensive glass about like you’d expect from a starting lineup with two seven-footers (Lauri Markkanen and Dusan Ristic). What you might not anticipate from such a towering lineup, however, is that by the time it takes the floor at Pauley Pavilion this may be the superior three-point shooting team of the two in Pac-12 play: Arizona shoots fewer treys than any team in the league, but when they do try them those shots have been going in 45 percent of the time.

As for UCLA, well, you know all about the Bruins. Bryce Alford has flourished off the ball, as the saying goes, Lonzo Ball has been everything everyone expected, and, incredibly, T.J. Leaf can lay claim to the best effective field goal percentage of any player in this sentence. All told Steve Alford has three of the nation’s 25 most accurate shooters in his starting lineup. No wonder UCLA has the best eFG percentage in D-I. What might the future hold for this offense?

The Bruins’ whole-season eFG percentage clocks in at a stupefying 61.7, while the Pac-12-only number here is a more comprehensible but still remarkable 58.1. For comparison’s sake here are the best such performances recorded over the last decade in major-conference play:

No, Bryce Alford may not continue to make 60 percent of his threes against conference opponents, but there doesn’t necessarily need to be a team-wide regression to the mean here. UCLA is going to be better than the mean. The Bruins right now are already operating at the level one might anticipate based on the applicable performance horizon — unspeakably accurate, yes, yet still presaged by other teams in the recent past.

Clarifying extreme metrics out of Eugene. Oregon’s numbers look ridiculously good here in part because the Ducks beat Oregon State by 42 instead of the more societally customary 25 or so. Then again if Dana Altman’s guys continue to shoot even better than UCLA in Pac-12 play (58.8 eFG) while carrying far and away the lowest turnover rate in the league, there could be more such blowouts. Stay tuned.

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What is this strange hypnotic power Arkansas has over bracketologists?

The SEC expanded to 12 teams in 1992 and to 14 in 2013, yet the league has never earned more than six NCAA tournament bids. That run will continue in 2017. Despite looking decidedly undistinguished in the figures shown here, Arkansas is commonly being projected as the SEC’s fourth NCAA tournament team alongside no-brainers Kentucky, Florida, and South Carolina.

The numbers from both sides of the Razorbacks’ split personality — tournament resume and Tuesday Truths — will converge as more basketball is played, but as to the former side we can remark simply that this is a 13-4 team with a three-letter-antique number in the 40s. And as for per-possession numbers, we should bear in mind that Mike Anderson’s team has undergone the severe statistical stress that goes with playing a road game at Rupp Arena. Take away those 40 minutes and you’re looking at a group that has outscored its conference opponents by a slight margin.

Besides, there’s an entertainment-based case to be made here. Moses Kinglsey and his mates play a fast-paced brand of ball with a bare minimum of turnovers being committed or forced. (Leave your 40 Minutes of Hell stereotypes at the door, which, granted, is slightly weird inasmuch as Anderson spreads the minutes around as though these guys really are pressing and harassing frantically.) Upcoming road tests at Florida and South Carolina notwithstanding, there are plenty of winnable games to be found on Arkansas’ remaining schedule. The bracketologists may be proven right yet.

BONUS rubble-sifting. Texas A&M has perhaps the highest turnover rate I’ve ever seen across more than a couple major-conference games: 29.2 percent. As a team, the Aggies’ assist-to-turnover ratio is SEC play is less than 0.7-to-1. In conference play, turnovers have outnumbered free throw attempts in College Station.

Cincinnati has played 329 possessions against American opponents, including 58 against SMU, easily the best non-UC team in the league. Even if the Bearcats’ opponents had committed zero turnovers over the course of all that basketball, Mick Cronin’s guys would still be giving up just 1.01 points per trip. That is some strong and, I dare say, entirely non-turnover-reliant defense. Granted, the American’s no murderers’ row where offense is concerned (that “0.98” at the bottom of the table is unsightly), but even making due allowance for their level of competition the Bearcats still come out looking notably fearsome. UC’s rivals for “best defense in the county” honors — usual suspects like Louisville and West Virginia, as well as shamefully overlooked newcomer South Carolina — all force turnovers, and that ability seems to diminish in importance annually around the time the bracket shrinks from 32 to 16. Conversely, if UC makes it that far, the Bearcats could still be standing tall. It’s tough to get the ball in the basket against these guys (at least through traditional means), and Cronin’s blessed with the best high-usage shot-making duo he’s ever had in the form of Jacob Evans and Kyle Washington.

League-leading Richmond gets a chance to show it’s legit with a road test at Dayton on Thursday evening. Laptops and the three-letter antique are united in rare accord in highly esteeming the Flyers and in suspecting the Spiders might be merely a January flash in the pan. Chris Mooney’s guys can prove otherwise with a victory on a floor where Archie Miller’s men are 38-4 since 2014. Richmond’s been getting it done early in A-10 play with insane better-than-Villanova shooting: 59 and 42 percent on twos and threes, respectively. T.J. Cline has fully lived up to that national-top-25-player label he received in the preseason, and RVA favorite De’Monte Buckingham’s been well nigh unstoppable from either side of the arc as a freshman. It’s going to be a good one at Dayton Arena.

Your pro bono Richmond-UD statistical forecast. You’re wondering how the Spiders can shoot better than any major-conference team in the last decade and still score less effectively than La Salle, Vanderbilt or Arizona State. This is exclusively a first-shot offense, so even historic shooting accuracy will be diluted to the point of near-normalcy. Though blessed with a commendably average turnover rate, Richmond has recorded an SVI a hair below 90 in A-10 play, akin to what we saw in conference play last year from the offensively (har!) benighted likes of Washington State and Boston College. Then again Miller appears to be ramping up for another 2015-style offensive-rebounding ban of his own this season. Look for robust percentages on the defensive glass when these two tangle. Possibly even a perfect game?…

Big things are afoot in hoops in the state of Illinois. In Evanston Chris Collins is doing his level best to make history, while, 145 miles down I-55 in Normal, Illinois State’s wreaking its own brand of havoc on a court named for Collins’ dad, Doug.

If Wichita State can’t score in Normal, it’s reasonable to assume no Valley offense will. Illinois State, I salute you.

The Redbirds have one of the best interior defenses in Division I, and Valley opponents are making just 36 percent of their twos against MiKyle McIntosh, Deontae Hawkins and company. Note additionally that the three-letter antique absolutely adores ISU, and, while the mocks (strangely) are continuing on full auto-pilot and showing WSU as earning the MVC’s only bid, a sixth consecutive trip to the NCAA tournament for the Shockers is far from assured. Can any Valley team go dancing without an Arch Madness title? Tuesday Truths will ponder this question with due diligence going forward.

Arch madness started at the very beginning. When a design competition was held in 1947 for a new Jefferson memorial in St. Louis, a telegram was sent to “Mr. E. Saarinen” in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, congratulating him on being named a finalist. For two hours internationally renowned architect Eliel Saarinen celebrated with his colleagues, only to learn that the telegram was actually intended for his son, Eero.

Przemek Karnowski is just a very prominent human visually, and I can’t help but wonder whether some of this a priori attention seeps into our collective so-called analysis of hoops. This possibility was brought home to me the other night as I watched Gonzaga dismantle Saint Mary’s 79-56 with pitiless efficiency in Spokane. Karnowski scored just nine points in 23 minutes, a fact which didn’t preclude the Bulldogs from coasting against a Gael team debilitated by Jock Landale’s evening-long tribute to dumb fouls. Clearly the seven-foot senior can take over a game, but this isn’t the same thing as saying he must do so in order for the Zags to excel. After all, Zach Collins is a pretty good Plan B. (Jeff Capel could really use a big man as good as Collins about now.) Speaking of not believing your lying eyes, that highly-skilled oh-so-Aussie SMC offense has precisely the same problem as a visual polar-opposite like Texas A&M: Randy Bennett’s guys own far and away the highest turnover rate in WCC play.